Mahoney v. Facebook, Inc.

Background

Genevieve Mahoney, a college student at Furman University, had an Instagram account under the username @genmahoney19. On January 6, 2021, she posted an image captioned “Our Capitol” after attending what she described as a rally protesting the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Later that day, Meta published an “Emergency News Statement” about the events at the Capitol. The statement said Meta was removing, among other things, “incitement or encouragement of the events at the Capitol, including videos and photos from the protestors,” because such material represented promotion of criminal activity under Meta’s policies. Meta later disabled and deleted Mahoney’s Instagram account.

Mahoney alleged that an anonymous student operating the @fur.meme Instagram account posted material recognizing Meta’s statement as referring to Mahoney and her photograph. One screenshot identified Mahoney’s Instagram handle and said she had attended a “violent, pro-Trump event” based on photographs she shared. Mahoney alleged that these posts damaged her reputation within the Furman community.

Motion and Claims

Meta moved to dismiss the amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint adequately states a legally valid claim. Meta argued that Mahoney failed to state a defamation claim, that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protected Meta from liability, and that California’s anti-SLAPP statute required the claim to be struck because it challenged protected speech activity.

Defamation Analysis

The court analyzed Mahoney’s claim as defamation per se, meaning a written statement allegedly defamatory on its face. Under the standard applied by the court, Mahoney had to allege that Meta published a false statement to another person, that the recipients reasonably understood the statement to concern Mahoney, that the statement was defamatory on its face, and that Meta failed to use reasonable care regarding its truth or falsity.

The court identified three independent problems with the claim.

First, the court held that the Emergency News Statement did not specifically refer to Mahoney. The statement referred to “videos and photos from the protestors,” which the court characterized as a group too large to satisfy California’s requirement that a defamatory statement be “of and concerning” the plaintiff. The court also found that Mahoney had not adequately alleged that a third party actually understood Meta’s statement to refer to her.

Second, the court held that Mahoney did not adequately allege publication to a third party who understood both the allegedly defamatory meaning and its application to her. The amended complaint did not allege that Meta’s statement appeared on Instagram, that the @fur.meme account saw the Facebook statement, or that the account’s posts referred to it. The court found no sufficient connection between Meta’s statement and the Instagram posts identifying Mahoney.

Third, the court held that Mahoney did not allege that a reasonable person would understand Meta’s statement to mean that everyone who posted photographs from the protest was a criminal. Because the statement did not refer to Mahoney, the court concluded that it did not accuse her of a crime and was not reasonably susceptible to the defamatory meaning she alleged.

Anti-SLAPP Motion and Other Arguments

The court stated that California’s anti-SLAPP statute can apply to state-law claims in federal court. But because the court found that Mahoney failed to state a defamation claim and Mahoney requested leave to amend, it deferred consideration of Meta’s anti-SLAPP motion. The court did not reach the parties’ arguments about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Disposition

The court granted Meta’s motion to dismiss the operative complaint for failure to state a claim for defamation. It granted Mahoney leave to amend and deferred ruling on the anti-SLAPP motion. Any amended pleading had to be filed by February 8, 2024. The order also stated that no additional parties or claims could be added without the court’s permission or Meta’s stipulation.